Kick Nuclear, October 2026

Posted: 20th October 2026

NO LONGER GREEN?

At its 2026 annual conference in October the Green Party of England and Wales voted to drop its long-standing commitment to phase out nuclear power. The motion was adopted at conference. It removed the party’s previous “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead committed the Green Party of England and Wales to “assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies”, though it adds that its electricity energy policy still “prioritises” offshore and onshore wind and rooftop solar as the primary sources of electricity.

This motion seems to aim to be all things to all people, to appeal to both those in favour of nuclear power and those against.

It certainly implies that nuclear power is a low-carbon technology, which it certainly isn’t as this newsletter has often argued; that is if you take into account the mining of uranium-bearing earth, uranium’s separation out from it, the transport and necessary enrichment of it, building and decommissioning of nuclear power stations and the need for long-time storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste produced by nuclear power stations. All emit large quantities of carbon. Add the emission of radiation, the danger of nuclear melt-downs the expensiveness of building and maintaining nuclear power stations, and the long period they take to build, nuclear power has very little going for it.

Bizarrely, the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, did not take part in the conference debate on the issue or in the vote on it though he has long been an opponent of nuclear power. He was AWOL because he was canvassing in the Hammersmith and Fulham constituency by-election in which he was standing for the Greens, but which he lost.

In response to the vote, Dr. Paul Dorfman, a leading opponent to nuclear power, pointed out that “Globally, new nuclear now adds in a year what renewables add every two days. With 20-plus-year construction times, repeated delays and huge cost overruns, new nuclear diverts scarce resources from faster options. Renewables, storage, efficiency and stronger grids can deliver much more for every pound spent.”

At least the Green Party has not changed its policy on oil and gas, which is that it opposes new fossil fuel developments and advocates for a rapid phase-out of oil and gas.

PUTTING HUMPTY BACK TOGETHER AGAIN

The Sellafield site in Cumbria now mainly functions as a large nuclear dump and has gained the accolade of being known as the most dangerous nuclear site in Europe.

It currently contains, mostly in decaying structures, highly-radioactive spent fuel from the country’s nuclear power station fleet stored in large cooling ponds, some140 tonnes of civil plutonium produced from decades of nuclear reprocessing, all forms of UK nuclear waste – high-level (vitrified liquid waste in stainless steel containers), intermediate-level, and low-level waste, and 1940-1960s infrastructure (such as the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo and Pile Fuel Cladding Silo) containing submerged legacy nuclear waste currently undergoing retrieval and clean-up. All highly-level nuclear waste there is intendedfor eventual long-term geological disposal deep under ground, but not even a site has been found for such a disposal site yet.

On August 24, Morgan Sindal, a leadinUK construction firm, was awarded a £35 million contract to replace 28,500 sq m of failing roofing across two crucial nuclear facilities at Sellafield, the Fuel Handling Plant and the Site Ion Exchange Effluent Plant, as water leaking into the facilities has damaged equipment and raised fears of operational shutdowns. The aim is to extend the life of the two facilities for 50 years. It is not planned to complete the work till at least 2031.

SIZEWELL C AND HINKLEY C

The first freight train conveying materials for the construction of two powerful 1.6 MW nuclear reactors at Sizewell from Tunstead Quarry in Derbyshire arrived on September 8 2026 via a 1.7 mile mile long temporary rail line into the construction site. It was carrying over a thousand tonnes of aggregate. The cost of building the plant is now estimated at £38bn, nearly double the £20bn estimated in 2020.

At Hinkley C the problem of fish being sucked into the reactors with the large volumes of cooling water needed to keep the reactors from over heating is claimed to have been solved by a “fish return tunnel” being constructed under the Bristol Channel, as a route intended to return fish back to it. It is estimated to cost £620 million.

NEW ZAPORIZHZHYABLACKOUT

The 6-reactor Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant plant has been fully shut down since September 2022 following Russian occupation of the area around it. It is still near the front line with Ukrainian-occupied land and suffers attacks, both accidental and intended from both sides. Also, the reactors still contain highly-radioactive fuel which requires continual cooling to prevent a possible melt-down.

On August 20th the site lost external power, it was said, “due to military activity which had breached a power line”, and was forced to depend entirely on emergency diesel generators. This was the 27th full power blackout at the plant since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

After two weeks using these generators. the Ukrainian state-run company Energoatom reported the plant had reached a “critical state”. It also claimed that the plant’s physical condition demonstrated breaches of fundamental nuclear safety rules.

Soon after that, power to the plant was restored using a backup power line. Next time?

SMR LATEST

In spite of all the current hype about Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) being the next big thing in electricity generation, no new generation land-based SMR plants have yet made it from the drawing board stage to become a commercial reality.

Some SMR projects are now starting to get off the ground and could provide a major new source of construction work in the coming years “if ambition survives reality”, as Construction Briefing, October 2026, puts it. Among the flurry of news stories about SMRs is one that Rolls-Royce SMR is launching a new supplier programme for £1.4 billion worth of contracts as it prepares to build three reactors at the Wylfa site in Angelesey. Another is that Samsung C&T, GE Vernova Hitachi, and Studsvik are teaming up to advance a 1.2GW power project in Sweden.